Self-scheduling of a joint hydro and pumped-storage plants in energy, spinning reserve and regulation markets

This paper addresses the self-scheduling problem for a price-taker hydro generating company. This company is comprised of several cascaded hydro plants along a river basin as well as a pumped-storage plant. Due to existence of a suitable zone as a natural reservoir, it is assumed that the hydro generating company has constructed a pumped-storage plant using the mentioned natural zone as upper reservoir and one of its hydro dams as lower reservoir. The goal is maximizing the profit of company through participating in the day-ahead energy and ancillary service markets. In order to reach this goal, it is essential to have an appropriate approach to self-schedule of company. The spinning reserve and regulation markets are considered as ancillary services in which the company can participate. The self-scheduling problem of hydro generating company is therefore formulated and solved as a mixed integer non-linear programming (MINLP) problem. Numerical results for a case study are discussed.